Capra76

No source (I'm not the OP) but I have seen some claims that both support and refute the claim. The KM ships were fitted with incredibly effective but incredibly complicated range-finding and fire control systems, which meant they were incredibly accurate but placed a huge load on the crew and needed them to perform at absolutely 100%. The upshot of this is that they were very accurate in peacetime training conditions and against opponents that couldn't shoot back but fell to pieces the moment fire started coming back their way. So in some respects the OP's claim is correct, but in actual real world combat situations the simpler RN systems were probably better.

Yes, you're right. Bismark became important because the UK was desperate to bring the US into the war and this was useful propaganda to that end, I wonder how many people in say France, Poland, possibly even Germany (not sure on this one) actually know much about her. Debatable, she gave Exeter a fearful pounding but was forced to retreat into a neutral harbour with no possibility of escape, the subsequent deception and intrigue give the story an interesting twist but the reality is that she was almost out of ammunition and had zero chance of making it back to Germany. Possibly an example of a Pyrrhic victory, in a narrow sense she won by inflicting more damage than she received, but the damage and losses were irreplaceable whilst the RN had easily enough reserves to replace theirs.

This is an interesting one in a Kamikaze R, with about 30 more seconds on the clock it would've been my best. I managed to take out a DD on straight (domination), then a low HP Cleveland in the far SW of the map, heading up north through the islands chasing an (out of planes) CV I saw him running south and started chase, at 2 (me + BB) v 2 (BB + CV) on advice I changed strategy and capped A instead then capped B. With me as last man on team enemy pushed back into B, I fired a couple of salvos of torps at the BB and missed before firing another at CV that took him down but they'd capped by that point, I turned, went Kamikaze, and launched at <4 km against BB but the clock ran out and they won, another 30 seconds and the result would've been different. Why this is bad? CV was out of planes, I thought that taking him down might be enough (points were fairly close) but it wasn't, If I'd gone Kamikaze against BB immediately he would've been dead (most likely) and CV would've been defenseless and with no hope of taking the cap, it was an honest and justifiable mistake but it cost us the game. To be fair, the enemy BB was pretty smart, so credit to him.

Difference is that the US/RU servers come from a very homogeneous population, the EU far less so. It's quite understandable that the RU players want to sail their (paper) ships and the US players very real ones, without wishing to cause offence the Nazi's were not exactly the most popular group of people in most of Europe so perhaps the comparison is a bit flawed.

Most of the BB in the world were gone by 1950, everything but the Iowa's were gone by the early 1960's and the Iowa's were mothballed for 25 years before a brief comeback as shore bombardment ships, so I have a hard time believing that fame has much to do with it when most of the players weren't born whilst these ships existed, and the 2nd most played ship in the game spent here entire career in a fjord as a target for the RAF. Now admittedly Bismark was quite famous, but the Battle of River Plate was equally if not more famous and until now we haven't had Ajax, Achilles or Exeter in the game, but, good news one of the combatants is coming, bad news, she lost and ended up scuttled at the bottom of the estuary. Anyway I thought your point was about EU ships being more popular on the EU server, why are US/IJN still almost at the top of the tree at most tiers.

So where's the epidemic of RN cruisers the? Or even KM cruisers?

Here's an idea that doesn't IMO count as rigging. How about everyone with a RU ship contacts each other and agrees to be in the game, in an RU ship at an agreed low-traffic time. If say a dozen of you turned up in 3 x RU divisions at 4.06 AM you'll stand a very good chance of being matched against at least one other division in a small numbers game, if you got enough players involved then you might get all RU games. Keep the time secret to avoid gatecrashers.

My guess is it's a business/financial decision, PvE doesn't give WG the same revenue streams as random. A lot of the game's revenue depends upon players paying to retrain captains (one way or another) or paying to upgrade ships so that they can be competitive in PvP, in PvE where you can expect a 97%+ WR anyway no-one really cares if they have a lousy stock ship with an untrained captain. If PvE became a serious alternative to PvP then all of a sudden you cut off those revenue streams.

There's a chart showing the flight time for the various DD here: https://sea-group.org/?p=1756&lang=en The 830 m/s might not look that impressive but the difference is huge, to all intents keeping up with Udaloi up to 10 km and I'd say still usable at 16 km (and remember Udaloi has 900 m/s shells, the T8 and lower go at 870 m/s).

Z52 might've been a problem with the range and (near enough) concealment of the Fletcher plus much better shell ballistics to exploit it, Z46 also albeit to a slightly lesser extent. In fact, apart from much worse turret rotation and slightly worse torpedoes at 9/10 (when they get 10 second turret rotation instead), the line looks (just going off the stats) like USN DD upgraded (ok handling looks pretty sluggish as well).

The problem is that in making the game "casual" they're turning BB into universal counters to everything, countered by nothing, thus rendering the other 80% of the game redundant, and I don't see how having the game dominated by 3 lines (or even 1 line) with the other 10 is ever going to make good business sense. Also, BB are the ships that really suffer from poor team play, but is it sensible that the rarest, most valuable, most powerful ships should be "casual mode" whilst the cheaper and far more numerous smaller ships get to be "high skill cap", isn't that the wrong way round?

According to WT, if my math is correct, for the last 2 weeks from tier 3 to tier 10 there is one tier only where more DD are played than BB. Can you guess which one it is?

Tier 3 level torpedoes (admittedly 2 more), tier 3 level guns with a worse range (but one more) now expected to fight in tier 7 games. Yeah, balanced.

More common than you might think, anything RN/USN that saw service during WWII (certainly cruiser and above), definitely Danae, possibly Caledon, definitely Cleveland, don't know about Omaha, the Soviet Kirov class definitely did (Uk/US sourced), possibly Konigsburg, definitely Nurnburg, I would guess only the IJN didn't really have any kind of radar assistance or early warning. Some of these ships served into the 1960's or beyond so there's a question whether we want to consider the game being staged in the 1940s or whether a 1970s Cleveland Class spec is acceptable.

Yep, think Farragut with cruddy ROF, range, turret rotation, fewer worse torpedoes, less health, a wider turning circle but without the USN smoke to hide in, Fubuki looks equally horrific but I guess most of us are past that. Seriously, this thing can face the Bismark with her secondary guns that reach out to 10 km, what is it supposed to do with 6 km torps and 8 km gun range? 10,500 HP on the A hull, if I see anyone with the A hull in random that's an instant report for poor play.

Ok, but if the game's going to be balanced around what's easiest rather than what's right than you'd best get ready for 10 BB per side, because BB numbers are already a problem and if WG are going to keep swinging the nerf-bat at anything that counters them it's going to get worse. DD are meant to counter BB are they not? Maybe if there were a few more DD around that could actually do this somewhat effectively BB would not be the most played ships at almost every tier.

The obvious question, why nerf the good ships rather than buff the bad ones? BB account for damn near 50% of all battles at some tiers and the 48,000 Minekaze games are 22,000 fewer than the total for Konig and about 20,000 fewer than for the various Kongos quite how WG can justify nerfing one of the few ships that keep a lid on BB numbers is beyond me.

First impression based on one co-op game only, unless you spend 14,000 free XP on the hull and torpedo upgrades, it's so bad I'm not willing to use it in random.

Why? Yes they were quite good ships, in fact they were about the only DD that did their job and countered BB, but why does the fact that the rest of the line was s*** mean they must be made s*** as well?

One thought occurs to me, if I buy Minekaze, Mutsuki and Hatty before the split then sell them afterwards, does that mean I get 4 x free port slots? Admittedly it's a bit wasteful of silver but I estimate it'll be fairly close to break-even if I sell the new Fubuki as well. Anyone interested in a used Kirov? Sailed very rarely, one-shot destroyed in the first 2 minutes of a game only once.

Just so you know, there were a grand total of 2 occasions in the pacific war when BB fired on each other, the 2nd naval battle of Guadacanal (Kirishima sunk by Washington) and the battle of Surigao Straight (Fuso torpedoed and sunk beforehand, Yamashiro destroyed by combination of gunfire and torpedoes). The RN BB were a bit more active, but then they're not in the game.

Why is everything that isn't a BB "spam" ?

Keep the distance at > 7 km and you can engage and win, but that said if somebody else can kill him why give away your position and risk taking damage?

Just got 2 x HE citadel hits with HE off a Minekaze FFS, is this some kind of cunning plan to make the enemy die laughing? If so it damn near worked.

Here's a thought, if I re-buy Minekaze, Mutsuki and Hatty then do I get a total of 4 new port slots? It's a bit wasteful on the silver but with the proceeds of the T6 Fubuki I think it'll just about break even.